Sorting through the week’s new singles and songs that have surfaced online over the last seven days, Jamie Skey (@jamie_skey) presents five songs you need to hear this week…
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Ume’s (fronted by self-taught shredder Lauren Larson) serve up rocky stompers with an unchained abandon. Black Stone is a seething mass of fuzz-blues riffs and insouciant vocals that tips its hats to the likes of Hole, Led Zeppelin and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Brighton goths Dark Horses seem somewhat adverse to sunlight, given their shadowy name and the fact their debut album was called Black Music. Fittingly, they conjure tunes that sound like a combination of some of the palest complexioned bands around, while their pitch-black, funky krautrock-inspired dirge has won over fans in high places, including fellow south coast resident Nick Cave. Forthcoming single Live On Hunger trembles with ghostly vocals and bellyache bass rumbles.
Having studied music and poetry at Cambridge and Harvard universities and composed for the likes of the London Symphony Orchestra and The Royal Opera House, it’s fair to say British-Norwegian singer-songwriter Sasha Siem isn’t your average popstar. The beautiful yet fleeting Proof is a disorientating shard of intelligence that places her among a pack of similarly singular artists like Andrew Bird and Joanna Newsom.
Though they residing in south London, The Fruitful Earth peddle a vintage-jukebox brand of chooglin’ rock’n’roll that sounds perfect for a different south all together, as its striding piano riffs and gospel colourations Up All Night sounds perfect accompanyment for an evening in a smoke-thickened, sweat-drenged American pool hall.
North Carolina electro-folk duo Sylvan Esso strip back their glitchy template on forthcoming single Coffee, which finds Amelia Meath’s blowin’-in-the-wind vocals placed gently among Nick Sanborn’s small playground of chimes, shakers and demented Playskool alarms.
